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A Lockheed Martin team has successfully completed a key design revue of the Transformational Satellite Communications System (TSAT) Space Segment, signaling the team’s readiness to proceed with the next development phase of the program.

TSAT will provide thousands of users with wideband, highly mobile, beyond line-of-sight protected communications to support network-centric operations for the future battlefield.

Nearly 300 government representatives from the US Air Force Military Satellite Communications Systems Wing and user communities, including representatives from all services within the Department of Defense, recently completed a three-day Space Segment Design Revue (SSDR) at Lockheed Martin Space Systems facilities in Sunnyvale, CA. During the review, the team detailed its planned architecture and design approach for TSAT, which will employ high speed optical communications, Internet protocol network routing and communications-on-the-move technologies to deliver a dramatic increase in connectivity, speed and mobility to the war fighter.

A highlight of the review was an extensive exhibit hall that featured a number of demonstrations and exhibits that summarized technology risk reduction efforts and the system engineering and integration expertise that is being applied to TSAT. An integrated end-to-end systems and payload testbed demonstrated critical communications-on-the-move and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities.

“We are extremely pleased with the outcome of this important review,” said Joanne Maguire, executive vice president of Lockheed Martin Space Systems. “Our TSAT solution builds upon technologies we have pioneered and matured to provide significantly improved, flexible communications for the war fighter. Our team is poised to help our customer achieve mission success on this vitally important program.”

TSAT represents the next step toward transitioning the Department of Defense wideband and protected communications satellite architecture into a single network comprising multiple satellite, ground and user segment components. The system ultimately will replace the Milstar and Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) programs and provide the Global Information Grid network extension to mobile war fighters, sensors, weapons and command, control and communications nodes located on unmanned aerial vehicles, piloted aircraft, on the ground, in the air, at sea or in space.

The Lockheed Martin/Northrop Grumman TSAT space segment team is currently working under a $540 M contract for the Risk Reduction and System Definition phase. This effort will culminate with a multi-billion dollar development contract to be awarded to a single contractor in late 2007.